


Kissing the Shore

by PoemJunkie



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: First Kiss, Like I'm begging you, M/M, Prompt Fill, Someone please get Buck into therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:16:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24241927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoemJunkie/pseuds/PoemJunkie
Summary: Christopher's return to surf lessons after the tsunami has Buck an anxious wreck, and Eddie realizing a few home truths.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley & Christopher Diaz & Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV), Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Comments: 23
Kudos: 519





	Kissing the Shore

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: an elderly woman tells them they remind her of her grandson and his boyfriend, from lil-italian-disapointment on Tumblr. Hm, this was probably supposed to be fluff, but it's too late now.

“I don’t know about this,” Buck fretted. 

“He’s fine.”

“Until he’s not! What if something happens, Eddie?”

“Buck. It’s a surfing lesson. He’s had dozens of surfing lessons.”

Eddie waves to Christopher, who waves back. He doesn’t look concerned at all. Buck is a wreck.

Eddie is not a wreck. But he thinks that’s mainly because he can’t afford to be a wreck at the same time as Buck, so he’s compensated by being eerily calm and collected about the whole thing, becoming more serene about the whole endeavor as Buck got more and more anxious. It’s like he’s passed Buck the anxiety ball, and Buck’s taken it on a full-throttle run to the end zone, leaving Eddie in the dust.

Christopher hadn’t been surfing since the tsunami. He hadn’t even mentioned it, and secretly, Eddie had been relieved, because he wasn’t sure he was ready to let his kid anywhere near the ocean.

But as the weeks passed, and Christopher began to do better in therapy, he’d brought it up again. Eddie, striving not to make it a big deal, in hopes that by not framing it as potentially traumatic, he won’t trigger any anxiety in Christopher, agreed easily to re-starting Christopher’s lessons.

Buck, however, had lost his shit at the news.

Not explicitly. But ever since Christopher had told him he was starting back up his adaptive surfing lessons, Buck had gone into anxiety overdrive.

Eddie wasn’t sure if having Buck on hand to supervise the first lesson was a good idea or a bad one. As the two sat in beach chairs, Buck’s leg was bouncing up and down so hard Eddie wasn’t sure he wasn’t going to drill down to China. But Eddie figured he’d be doing that anyway, sitting at home, and at least this way, he had eyes on Christopher the entire time.

Eddie reached over, gripping Buck’s knee and pinning his leg -- not his bad one -- to the ground firmly.

“Buck,” he said, firmly. “It’s going to be okay. Christopher is fine. His instructor has a lot of experience with kids with disabilities. He’s going to be in our sight the whole time.”

It’s easy for Eddie to be patient with Buck about this. He was a wreck himself, the first time Christopher took a lesson, and for most of the first one, his class never even left the beach, simply learning the motions on the sand. And Buck has significantly more trauma related to Christopher and the ocean than Eddie had during Christopher’s first surfing lesson.

Trauma. That’s what he’s looking at, and Eddie knows it. Buck has made the decision to come back to work, but Eddie knows being a fire marshal isn’t the same for Buck, and the worst part of the whole thing for him isn’t that he isn’t able to do the daring rescues, it’s that the job he’s doing is far away from the 118, and from his family. 

Eddie knows that Buck hadn’t been following the dispatch Twitter, and didn’t have an emergency broadband app on his phone before the tsunami. He only has them now so he can torture himself with all the calls everyone is going on without him. Fire calls are the worst for him, and Eddie’s taken to checking his phone immediately after any fire call, to respond to the inevitable string of texts from Buck, just to set his mind at ease.

Buck has perhaps developed a complex about not being able to see his loved ones when they’re in potential danger, and should probably be seeing a therapist about that. 

Buck stiffened next to him. “Eddie,” he said, a desperate tone coloring his voice.

Christopher was in the water. Well, he was on his surfboard, with his instructor behind him, paddling out into the waves.

“It’s okay,” Eddie said, because it is. This is the whole point of the surfing lessons, after all.

Buck’s leg bounces under his hand, the firm pressure Eddie was exerting no longer enough to cover his anxiety. Eddie gives up and just grabs Buck’s hand. Seemingly grateful for the lifeline, Buck grips it tight, almost too tight, his knuckles white. His breathing is shallow, and he looks pale underneath his tan. He looks about half a step away from an anxiety attack.

Eddie notices that nearby, an elderly woman notices them, her eyes wide and staring at their connected hands. He doesn’t have time to worry about that, and he doesn’t want Buck to have to spare her a thought, so he uses the hand not clinging to Buck’s to touch his cheek gently, turning his face towards Eddie. This, of course, block’s Buck’s view of the surfing lesson, and he makes a small noise of distress.

Eddie knows if he were here by himself, he wouldn’t be able to make himself look away from the water. But Buck has the anxiety ball, so it’s surprisingly easy.

 _Christopher is fine. His instructor has him._ Somehow, it’s easier to believe when he has Buck to reassure next to him.

Eddie moves his hand from Buck’s cheek to the back of his neck, grounding him and offering comfort. He keeps his voice even and firm.

“Buck, you need to calm down a little bit. Breathe with me.”

He takes Buck’s hand, the one he’s holding, and presses it flat against his own chest, letting Buck feel the rise and fall. He deliberately slows his breathing.

Eddie had gone to some counseling session at the VA when he was discharged, a feeble attempt to get back on track with Shannon, and at her insistence, and he had shown Eddie some breathing exercises, meant to be grounding when he found himself getting stressed, but Eddie doesn’t really remember the number of seconds he’s supposed to breathe in and out for. He wasn’t really paying that close attention at the time, sure it wasn’t anything he would ever put to use. So he just breathes slowly and deeply, filling his entire chest.

Buck seems frozen at first, his head twitching towards the water, but Eddie squeezes his neck, where his hand still rests, and his fingers, where they’re pinned against the soft _thump thump_ of Eddie’s heart, until Buck lets out a shaky breath and then gasps it back in, shallow and wet sounding.

Eddie doesn’t blink, just keeps breathing, keeping his hold on Buck, until Buck seems to get in the groove of it, breathing more fully, and color comes rushing back into his face, making him look less like he’s about to keel over in the sand.

“Better?” Eddie asked, softly.

Buck nodded, still taking slow, deep breaths.

“Can you watch for the rest of the lesson? Or do we need to go somewhere and come back?”

Eddie can’t believe he suggested this. He would never, usually. Carla would say showing a willingness to entrust Christopher to someone else, even for half an hour, while he has the ability to be there and supervise -- always his preference -- is growth. 

But Buck’s head shake is so vigorous he looks like a dog trying to shed water.

“I don’t think I can,” Buck said, sounding almost despairing. “Look away, I mean. Don’t make me, Eddie.”

Buck is in fact, looking away right now, looking at Eddie, not the water. Hasn’t for several minutes now. But Eddie knows asking him to walk away, to be out of sight of Christopher, might be asking too much of him right now. Last time Buck took his eyes off Christopher in the ocean, he’d lost him and hadn’t been able to locate him for hours. 

Eddie can’t imagine.

Eddie relinquishes the back of Buck’s neck, and lets his hand drop from its resting place over his heart, though he doesn’t let go.

“Have you talked with anyone about this?” he asked.

“I --” Buck looks as though he’s about to deny needing therapy, but as he only narrowly avoided a panic attack on the beach, seems to realize it’s not a convincing argument. “It’s not usually that bad. It’s just --” Here, he indicated to the waves on the beach. 

“Triggering,” Eddie agreed, because if Buck hadn’t had the anxiety ball today, Eddie’s almost sure he would be just as much of a mess. “But we’re overwriting those memories today. Taking a page out of Christopher’s book.”

Because Christopher is having the time of his life. Eddie knows he’s not completely immune to the effects of the tsunami. The dreams of his drowning mother show how much the experience disturbed him and awoke within him some lingering anxiety. 

In other ways, Christopher seems to think the ordeal wasn’t that big of a deal. He speaks in glowing tones about the time on the fire truck, and Buck’s rescues of the other people that had sheltered there with them. 

This day was supposed to be healing, for both Christopher and Buck. Christopher’s therapist has been supportive of it, particularly as it was Christopher who had brought it up. A surfing lesson, and then -- if Buck didn’t pass out first -- a day on the beach, getting used to the idea of the ocean again. Eddie was starting to think that plan had been ambitious. But Buck had already promised this day to Christopher, and Eddie didn’t think he’d have the heart to deny him, even if it meant that he spent the whole day in perpetual anxiety.

And you would never know he had any issues at all, if you looked out to see him on the water, standing on his board with his instructor supporting him with a tight hold on his vest, as he rode in a gentle wave, shrieking with laughter.

Buck had missed Christopher’s paddle out -- probably for the best -- and turns his head to watch the kid ride in the wave, coasting in until his instructor helps him kneel, and then get on his belly to paddle in the remainder of the way. 

“It’s good that he’s not afraid,” Buck said. “I don’t want him to lose something he loves.”

“He didn’t.”

Buck still looks pale, and sweating a little. Eddie patted his hand consolingly. 

“Keep breathing. I’m going to get you a water.”

“I can --”

Eddie raised an eyebrow. Their blanket and cooler is set up only a short distance up beach, further from the tide line, but he has no illusions here. Buck isn’t moving from this spot until Christopher is done with his lesson and safe back under their collective wing, and they both know it.

“Yes, alright, thank you,” Buck said, admitting defeat. 

“Just keep breathing.”

It’s harder than Eddie thought it would be, to walk away from Buck, even for a few moments. But he’s powering through on the weird quality of calm he’s had with him all day, moving swiftly to their blanket to pull out two bottles of water. When he stands and turns, the woman who had been giving Buck and Eddie looks as they held hands is standing before him, wringing her hands.

Eddie isn’t in the mood for some Evangelical lecture on the sins of sodomy for the crime of comforting his best friend, but he was also raised to be respectful of women and his elders, so he simply straightens his back.

“Ma’am,” he said, politely, but without inflection, giving her a nod but no encouraging welcome.

“I know this may seem presumptuous --” she started, and Eddie mentally started his retreat from the conversation, “-- I don’t want to appear nosy. It’s only, you see, I was so relieved.”

Eddie squinted, a bit thrown off by this new, unexpected direction.

“Relieved, ma’am?”

Her hands fluttered in front of her. “Oh, I’m making a mess of this. I knew I would. It’s only, I’ve seen you here before. With your lovely little boy.”

Eddie takes a moment to study her more closely, and realizes he too recognizes her, from previous lessons. She comes with a little girl with an artificial foot. By her age, it’s probably her granddaughter. The girl is fearless, and Eddie doesn’t think she’ll need adaptive lessons for very long, before she moves on to a more independent curriculum. 

“I know it seemed as though I was staring, before. Well, I guess I was,” the woman continued. “It’s just, I don’t know many gay people. Or, probably I do, but we didn’t talk about it in my day, you understand? So, it was hard for me to picture it. How it worked.” 

She folded her hands in front of her. “My grandson only just came out, you see. And I said the right things, I suppose, the things you’re supposed to say these days, but in my heart I was worried. About all the things he would lose. Children, for one. Tenderness. I didn’t think there could be tenderness between two men. And the struggles he’ll have. I worry for him.” She laughed. “I’m sorry if I seem rude. It just seemed to me God stepped in today, to teach me something.”

Eddie doesn’t know what to say to all this. He and Buck aren’t together, have never kissed or had sex, but he stopped denying the peculiar intamacy they have a long time ago. It’s an uphill battle against the brick wall of Hen and Chimney’s raised eyebrows, and he’s never managed to make an argument that sounds even halfway convincing, even to himself.

On the other hand, he doesn’t know that it’s that important, in this moment. With this woman who doesn’t quite understand, but is trying, for the sake of someone she loves. And out there is her grandson, probably just a kid, who needs someone to help her understand him.

He settles for telling her the truth.

“That man is the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said. “He’d protect my kid with his own body.” He has proven that. “And he has the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever met.” He reached out to touch her arm. “Whatever struggles come with that, it’s worth it. I promise it’s worth it.”

Because Eddie almost lost Buck three times in the past year. To the bombing, to the embolism, and to the tsunami. He’s had time to contemplate a life without Buck in it. It’s lacking something fundamental.

Perhaps some of that comes through on his face, because her eyes tear up, only slightly. And something cracks open in Eddie’s chest. He’s not sure what, but he feels it splitting him open, making him feel cleft in two, oddly separate from himself. 

“I’m glad for you,” she whispered to him. “Hang on to him. Tight as you can.”

“I plan to.”

She lets him go, then, to return to Buck, holding the water bottles, beaded with condensation, chilling his hands under the heat of the sun.

Buck looks at him as he rejoins him, the line of tension in his shoulders easing only slightly. He looks like a mess. His anxiety has put stress on his face, wrinkling his brow and his color still hasn’t returned to normal. His smile, when he shows it to Eddie, is a painful, fragile thing, clearly more for Eddie’s benefit than genuine.

He looks stunningly beautiful. Eddie’s not sure how he never noticed before. How he took in Buck’s physique and registered his great smile and the way women reacted to him and never came up with the adjective _beautiful_ before. It seems a major oversight on his part. 

He cracks the top of Buck’s water, handing it to him as he resettles in his seat. Then, before he can think too much about it or talk himself out of it, he picks Buck’s hand up out of his lap, folding his fingers securely between his own. 

Buck looks at him, startled. This is fundamentally different from the way Eddie was holding his hand before, even though it’s arguably less intimate. Before, Eddie was grounding him, clasping all four of Bucks fingers in his own grip, allowing Buck to grip back and channel his anxiety somewhere else. 

What’s happening now is how lovers hold hands, intertwined and comfortable. 

“Eddie?”

Eddie gives a brief squeeze of his fingers. Buck seems well and truly distracted, now, his eyes flicking between their joined hands and Eddie’s face, a new kind of anxiety blooming in his eyes. Eddie can hardly stand it. 

He leans forward, pressing his lips to Buck’s in an impulse move, right there, on the beach, feeling the slight chapping of Buck’s lips and the slight stubble he’d neglected to shave that morning. 

Buck doesn’t pull back, or startle, just makes a soft noise, a brief exhale, as Eddie pulls away, his eyes round. 

“Did you just --”

“Was that okay?”

Buck huffed. “I mean, yeah, Eddie, but you can’t just do that out of the blue!”

“Was it?”

Buck looked down at their linked fingers, and out on the waves, where Christopher had switched boards. “Maybe not.” He lifted his fingers to his mouth. They were trembling slightly. 

“Then let’s just enjoy the day. And we can talk about it at home.”

Buck was looking at him like he was a revelation. Eddie supposed it was only fair. He glanced over Buck’s shoulder, locking eyes with the woman with the gay grandson, where she was still watching them, circumspectly, from the corner of her eye. He lifted Buck’s hand to press a kiss to it, before turning to watch Christopher finish his lesson. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from a quote from poet Sarah Kay. “There’s nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it’s sent away.”


End file.
